Note 3. More properly,says a note in Robert Bells edition of Surrey,rakel, rash, careless, reckless. Rakehel was used to designate a dissolute profligate fellow. Some commentators, however, might choose to suppose that there was an involuntary, if not a candid, propriety in the word, when speaking of the Court of Henry VIII. [back]

Note 4. Some of the sentences in these verses are ill put together, perhaps were incorrectly copied from the manuscript; but the picture at the beginning, some of the expressions in the middle,such as jolly woes and hateless debate,and the evidence of passionate emotion at the close, render it worth transcribing. In a subsequent poemnot a sonnetwritten when Surrey was put into confinement in the same place in consequence of a quarrel, he again mourns the pleasures he once enjoyed there: